Baconianism

The philosophy of Francis Bacon was interpreted in various ways in the seventeenth century. In England, his utopian project and natural history became the basis for the pro- jects of religious pacification, pedagogical ref- ormation, and scientific cooperation of Hartlib, Comenius and Charleton. In the hands of Eve- lyn, Wilkins, and Wren, moreover, Bacon’s ideal of cooperative science engendered the birth of the Royal Society, and his natural history guided the experimental activities of Boyle and Hooke. In France and the Nether- lands, attention was paid to Bacon’s natural history especially within the circle of friends of Descartes. In the second half of the seven- teenth century, though Bacon’s historical approach was gradually supplanted by mechanical-mathematical science in Europe, Baconianism still served as a source of argu- ments in the Dutch Cartesian context, as to his theory of error and as a source of criticisms to Aristotelianism